第70章 CHAPTER XIV THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE LAYING(3)

A conclusion not devoid of value may be drawn from my paper game bags. In our markets, especially in those of the South, the game is hung unprotected from the hooks on the stalls. Larks strung up by the dozen with a wire through their nostrils, thrushes, plovers, teal, partridges, snipe, in short, all the glories of the spit which the autumn migration brings us, remain for days and weeks at the mercy of the flies. The buyer allows himself to be tempted by a goodly exterior; he makes his purchase and, back at home, just when the bird is being prepared for roasting, he discovers that the promised dainty is alive with worms. O horror! There is nothing for it but to throw the loathsome, verminous thing away.

The bluebottle is the culprit here. Everybody knows it; and nobody thinks of seriously shaking off her tyranny: not the retailer, nor the wholesale dealer, nor the killer of the game. What is wanted to keep the maggots out? Hardly anything: to slip each bird into a paper sheath. If this precaution were taken at the start, before the flies arrive, any game would be safe and could be left indefinitely to attain the degree of ripeness required by the epicure's palate.

Stuffed with olives and myrtle berries, the Corsican blackbirds are exquisite eating. We sometimes receive them at Orange, layers of them, packed in baskets through which the air circulates freely and each contained in a paper wrapper. They are in a state of perfect preservation, complying with the most exacting demands of the kitchen. I congratulate the nameless shipper who conceived the bright idea of clothing his blackbirds in paper. Will his example find imitators? I doubt it.

There is, of course, a serious objection to this method of preservation. In its paper shroud, the article is invisible; it is not enticing; it does not inform the passer by of its nature and qualities. There is one resource left which would leave the bird uncovered: simply to case the head in a paper cap. The head being the part most threatened, because of the mucus membrane of the throat and eyes, it would be sufficient, as a rule, to protect the head, in order to keep off the Flies and to thwart their attempts.

Let us continue to study the bluebottle, while varying our means of information. A tin, about four inches deep, contains a piece of butcher's meat. The lid is not put in quite straight and leaves a narrow slit at one point of its circumference, allowing, at most, of the passage of a fine needle. When the bait begins to give off a gamy scent, the mothers come. Singly or in numbers. They are attracted by the odor which, transmitted through a thin crevice, hardly reaches my nostrils.

They explore the metal receptacle for some time, seeking an entrance. Finding naught that enables them to reach the coveted morsel, they decide to lay their eggs on the tin, just beside the aperture. Sometimes, when the width of the passage allows of it, they insert the ovipositor into the tin and lay the eggs inside, on the very edges of the slit. Whether outside or in, the eggs are dabbed down in a fairly regular and absolutely white layer. I as it were shovel them up with a little paper scoop. I thus obtain all the germs that I require for my experiments, eggs bearing no trace of the stains which would be inevitable if I had to collect them on tainted meat.

We have seen the bluebottle refusing to lay her eggs on the paper bag, notwithstanding the carrion fumes of the Linnet enclosed; yet now, without hesitation, she lays them on a sheet of metal. Can the nature of the floor make any difference to her? I replace the tin lid by a paper cover stretched and pasted over the orifice.

With the point of my knife, I make a narrow slit in this new lid.

That is quite enough: the parent accepts the paper.

What determined her, therefore, is not simply the smell, which can easily be perceived even through the uncut paper, but, above all, the crevice, which will provide an entrance for the vermin, hatched outside, near the narrow passage. The maggots' mother has her own logic, her prudent foresight. She knows how feeble her wee grubs will be, how powerless to cut their way through an obstacle of any resistance; and so, despite the temptation of the smell, she refrains from laying so long as she finds no entrance through which the newborn worms can slip unaided.

I wanted to know whether the color, the shininess, the degree of hardness and other qualities of the obstacle would influence the decision of a mother obliged to lay her eggs under exceptional conditions. With this object in view, I employed small jars, each baited with a bit of butcher's meat. The respective lids were made of different colored paper, of oilskin, or of some of that tinfoil, with its gold or coppery sheen, which is used for sealing liqueur bottles. On not one of these covers did the mothers stop, with any desire to deposit their eggs; but, from the moment that the knife had made the narrow slit, all the lids were, sooner or later, visited and all of them, sooner or later, received the white shower somewhere near the gash. The look of the obstacle, therefore, does not count; dull or brilliant, drab or colored: these are details of no importance; the thing that matters is that there should be a passage to allow the grubs to enter.

Though hatched outside, at a distance from the coveted morsel, the newborn worms are well able to find their refectory. As they release themselves from the egg, without hesitation, so accurate is their scent, they slip beneath the edge of the ill-joined lid, or through the passage cut by the knife. Behold them entering upon their promised land, their reeking paradise.

Eager to arrive, do they drop from the top of the wall? Not they!

Slowly creeping, they make their way down the side of the jar; they use their fore part, ever in quest of information, as a crutch and grapnel in one. They reach the meat and at once install themselves upon it.